Film Shoot Reflection - SCENE 3

Our original plan for scene 3 was to film at a nearby multi-storey car park, but unfortunately on the day we had an issue with snow. Instead we decided on shooting at our local train station, as it was nearby yet also a suitable and effective location for our genre. It had lots of space and a good atmosphere. No behind the scenes photos were taken as we remained too focussed on shooting as quickly as possible due to the low temperatures and gradual loss of light, which would effect continuity in our final product. This is also why arriving fully prepared was absolutely essential for this scene. As the location had changed, slight alterations were made to our shot list.

We met our actor there and transported ourselves along with our equipment and actress after college. We parked ourselves at the far end of the car park in an attempt to minimise public interference. We arrived fully prepared with two cameras, a Canon 5D and a 6D, a few batteries and a few memory cards. We also brought the dolly, tripod and steadicam. Upon arrival we quickly discovered that the dolly came in extremely useful as not only did it enable us to perform the smoothest tracking shots possible, it also provided a good height for our tripod. We swapped to the steadicam when filming the tracking shot up the stairs, as a dolly would not work efficiently for this. For each shot we did multiple takes, even if I felt fairly comfortable it was a good one just to ensure that whilst editing we would have the best footage. With the placement of the coins, phone and keys when our actress drops them, we took photos to make sure that when filming scene 2, the crime scene, the placement would remain the same.

One issue we found was the brightness of the daylight. A convention of crime dramas is their low lighting used to set the right mood and atmosphere, and specifically as this was the actual crime happening it was essential the scene not be too bright. We kept the aperture as low as possible, but agreed to edit it in post production as it was a problem we could not avoid.

Another issue was the background noise. Whilst filming in public places similar problems will always arise in terms of cars, people, and in our case also trains moving in the background. They hold the biggest threat to continuity. To avoid this we didn't film whilst cars, people or trains went past, and we kept our filming to as small an area as possible to limit any changes occurring. In most shots all you can see is our actor's car.

Overall, considering Sam and I had to last minute change the location we were very pleased with the results when looking back on the footage. We effectively dealt with the issue of the public, and are confident that editing in post will solve our brightness issue.